


Alexithymia

by Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23132350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi/pseuds/Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi
Summary: Alexithmyia:Defined as the inability to recognize or describe one's own emotions.Or, Helena Bertinelli gets a girlfriend, with the help of her new friends. And google. Mostly google.
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance, Renee Montoya/Ellen Yee
Comments: 41
Kudos: 346





	1. Chapter 1

Helena didn’t always have the words to get her feelings across, or to even understand them herself. When she was four she had her diagnosis made, very discreetly organised by her parents, that she had ASD. Autism Spectrum Disorder. It made sense, her parents were not surprised, and her school teachers changed to reflect the new information. As she got older, she noticed more and more that she was different from the other children, that she struggled with things they didn’t even need to think about. 

Her parents reassured her every time she needed it. If there was a problem, if a child said something mean, if she didn’t understand something, if the world was getting too much, Helena would go to them and be calmed down until she felt safe again. When her brother started going to school, she promised to herself that he would never be hurt by anyone. Family always stuck together, Bertinellis always together.

Until they weren’t.

The change was sudden and painful, in more than one way, and Helena hated change. Her routine had never changed that much before in her entire life. But training gave her a new routine, a new purpose to focus her energy and rage and desperation for justice, and she settled into it. Assassins had to be strong, so Helena became strong. Assassins had to be fast, so Helena ran and ran until it felt like her legs would fall off. Assassins had to be quiet, Helena had always preferred silence.

The others were not silent. They weren’t quiet. The Birds of Prey were practically defined as being loud and brash. Dinah was always talking. Renee was always moving. Harley was always doing both, in painfully bright colours. Some days it was too much for Helena to process, so she hid away in her apartment before she had recharged enough to interact with them again. Over time, she learnt their patterns.

Renee always moved in certain ways. 

She staggered at night when she had been drinking too much, favouring her left side because of a very old injury. She gestured a lot but the gestures matched up with actions from 80s cop movies, doing nothing to make it less funny, and the more movies they watched, the more Helena could predict and adjust. Renee was only still when Ellen was around, all of her attention focused solely on the other woman, in a way no one else could hold it. Helena liked Ellen; she was no nonsense, she helped them when it mattered, when it was kids who needed the rules bending just a bit, and she obviously still cared for Renee.

Dinah was always making noise.

She sang in the mornings, when she was showering and making breakfast, when they went out drinking, when they were having quiet training days. Helena was entranced by the other woman’s voice. It was soft and powerful at the same time and so smooth she would fall asleep if she didn’t adore it so much. Dinah’s special ability, as they called it, hidden just below only emphasised that even more. Even when she wasn’t singing, Helena noticed she didn’t like things to be silent, tapping on the sides, humming as they walked. 

Harley was both of those things at once. 

She was loud, voice echoing, and she was always moving, filled with energy. She was more of a kid than Cass was at some points. Her loud clothes made it even harder for Helena to concentrate and her confusing words, coming out too fast for Helena to hear, let alone comprehend, made Helena try and avoid her when she was overwhelmed.

But Renee didn’t touch her after the first few flinches, instead winking overtly at Helena where she would hug or fist bump or high five one of the others. And Dinah learnt patterns and tunes to hum that made Helena relax, the repetition calming her mind without even realising it. And Harley, with her PhD, picked up on her diagnosis and stepped aside to explain things when she saw the confusion on her face. Sometimes her analogies were even more confusing or uncomfortably graphic, but she tried and that was all Helena cared about.

All she wanted to do was explain to them how touched she was that they did so much for her, that she was feeling as safe as her parents made her feel in those years before the tragedy. They she didn’t feel as angry anymore, her only emotion she’d felt in years. But she didn’t have the words to do it. Helena tried to do it subtly, to show that she cared in the same way they did. She winked back at Renee, even worse than the other woman and that was whilst Helena was sober and Renee was five shots in. She listened intently when Dinah sung songs that Helena knew reminded her of her mum, telling her the melody was pretty. She silently made disgustingly sweet coffee whenever Harley came over because the drink was the other woman’s favourite and the others mocked it just a bit. 

Helena almost didn’t notice when her feelings changed.

They were all family. She remembered those feelings, only just, and she spent nights thinking it over until she had decided on the words. Renee reminded her of her older cousin, who had always tried so hard to be tough but melted the second Helena and her brother were with her. Whilst Renee didn’t go as soft as her cousin had, she brought on the same feelings. Harley reminded her of her grandmother, a comparison Helena knew both parties would love and hate, who was powerful and smart and wouldn’t let anyone forget her value. Cass was her brother, from the moment Helena had first seen her.

She didn’t know what Dinah was to her, didn’t know who she was reminded of.

When Helena saw her, even if they had only been apart for a few minutes, her stomach flipped in on itself, her heart beat almost scarily fast. Words, which had always been her weakest point, became almost impossible when Dinah was looking at her, with a smile that made her go warm all over. Hearing her laugh, as musical a sound as the rest of her, became her main goal in life, almost to the intensity of her revenge mission. Nothing was that intense, Harley had said in her more lucid conversations that it was an unhealthy coping mechanism, and Helena was fairly grateful for that.

It took her a while to notice that there was a difference, and she couldn’t quite figure out what the differences were at first, so Helena made a symptoms list. She named the symptom, the frequency and what had been happening at the time of onset. Dinah’s name came up a lot on the paper. Helena carried it with her everywhere, updating it whenever necessary, and it became a decently long file.

“So we manage to convince you to go out and you bring work with you?” Renee teased in what was her friendly tone. Helena knew it was friendly because she was bringing over a tray of drinks and her eyes were all crinkled at the corners. If she wasn’t carrying something, her hands would be doing circular movements. Ellen was with them as well, which always put Renee in a good mood. “What is it, huh? We don’t exactly have any paperwork and we did finish a big bust an hour ago.”

“Plausible deniability,” Ellen reminded her, taking a beer from the tray.

“You can just say I was drunk and talking out of my ass,” Renee replied, squeezing her arm in a way that Helena didn’t think friends did. “But come on, Crossbow, what is it? You got another lead or something?”

Helena didn’t like nicknames when she was younger. Most of the nicknames she got involved children on the playground calling her some variation of retard and when she was being trained it reminded her that she wouldn’t hear her parents’ nicknames for her anymore. Now, Crossbow was okay, but only when Renee or Harley used it. Dinah and Cass didn’t, and Helena didn’t know Ellen well enough to work out when she was being nice. 

“I’m trying to figure something out,” Helena replied, biting down on the end of the pen as a group a few booths over laughed loudly, hurting her ears. Bars were normally easier than clubs, where the music was overwhelmingly uncomfortable, but tonight she wasn’t as lucky. Dinah was about to go up and sing, a karaoke thing had been set up, so that problem would be resolved.

“Anything you need help with?”

“I can’t figure out my symptoms.”

“Are you sick?” Renee demanded, and Helena recognised the panic in her voice then. It didn’t happen very often but it made her fill with dread when it did. She tore the paper out of Helena’s hands, studying it, no doubt looking for whatever she had missed going on with her teammate. Helena wasn’t used to people caring about her that much. Even Ellen had the pursed look that people got when they were concerned. After a few tense moments, when Helena worried about biting through the pen, Renee visibly relaxed, enough for even Helena to notice with ease. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

“Do you know what it is?” she asked, interested in the older woman’s input. As brash as Renee was, she was good with people. In her own words, she understood other people, she just didn’t give a shit about most of them. Helena was glad to be considered ‘other’ in that instance. Renee just smiled at her in a surprisingly soft way.

“You never had a crush before?”

“No, I was training by the time I was old enough. Any additional emotional attachments distract from missions,” Helena recited the mantra she had been told from the age of eight. Ellen, not quite caught up with all of their intricate and scarring backstories, looked very worried at that. 

“Okay, well, all of this stuff, means you’ve got a crush.”

“Will it go away?”

“Sometimes it does, sometimes it becomes real feelings,” Renee said as diplomatically as she could after five beers. “Just give it time, maybe don’t obsess over it as much this intently, alright?”

Helena nodded. She had a goal she could focus on, and a word for understanding what she was feeling. The evening had been very successful, by her own standards, and Dinah hadn’t even started singing yet. When the other woman finally took the stage, a pathetic little thing that was more of one very wide step than a stage, they cheered. Not the most normal thing to do at a karaoke night, but they went every week and bought a lot of drinks so management stopped anyone from commenting on it to their faces. It would also be bad for the bar if a fight started up and Renee was always up for a fight when she was drunk. Maybe not with Ellen there, but any other night.

She sighed a little bit as Dinah started to sing. After the first few notes, even the louder patrons had shut up to listen to her and applause that rivalled theirs at the start broke out by the end. Dinah walked back over to their booth, collecting a tray of shots for them, and grinned with the post-performance adrenaline that made her eyes sparkle in a way that had Helena reaching for her symptoms list. Renee gave her a pointed look and Helena’s hand fell away from the pocket she stored it in. 

A crush. 

She had a diagnosis, she no longer needed a symptom list. Helena wondered, briefly, if she should start up something to help her get over the crush, it would involve much more research, but then Dinah grinned at her specifically and she decided she didn’t ever want the feelings to go away. They were good feelings. Helena liked those feelings.

<>

“I don’t like these feelings,” Helena complained into her pillow and in the general vicinity of Renee. Renee snorted.

“That’s part of having a crush, Crossbow.”

“It’s stupid.”

“That’s part of having a crush, Crossbow.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s part of having a crush, Crossbow.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“That’s part of having a cru-ugh!”

The pillow that Helena had been complaining into smacked firmly into Renee’s face, cutting her sentence off early. The force knocked the older woman back a bit and made her laugh at Helena’s bright red face. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, Helena could recognise those from before her family died, she heard it so much.

“You missed out on an important teenager rite of passage,” Renee insisted. “Anyone who has ever had a crush, has had their friends making fun of them for the crush. It’ll help you get over it.”

Helena fell silent at that. She didn’t want the feelings to go away. They were uncomfortable and frankly embarrassing almost always but the idea of not feeling that way about Dinah anymore was so alien and wrong to her that Renee even suggesting it sent alarm bells through her. Renee noticed the change before Helena could say anything, for which she was incredibly grateful. 

“You alright, Crossbow?”

“I like … liking Dinah.”

“Really?” Renee teased. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“A lot? Well then, I think we’ve got a new mission.”

“Why? Have you found a new lead on the old gang?”

<>

Renee’s new mission was not to do with the old gang that they had lost track of a few months before after a difficult bust. Renee’s new mission was about Helena figuring out a way to ask Dinah on a date. Without Dinah picking up on their plans before it was too early. Helena needed to have a plan for the date and a script for asking her out before Dinah learnt about it all. And since they spent most of their time together, working and training and fighting, that was difficult. Helena would also prefer it for Harley to not learn about it, and that meant not telling Cass. 

“Are you two alright?” Dinah asked, walking over to the punching bag that Renee was working on, held by Helena. They had been talking over possible date plans while Dinah was doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen. “You’ve been pretty secretive recently.”

Helena froze up a little bit. Lying was not one of her strong suits. She could barely come up with words that sounded okay when she meant them, coming up with realistic lies was almost impossible. Another reason why staying silent was usually her main course of action. She looked desperately over to Renee, who thankfully stepped up to the problem.

“Romantic problems,” she said. Renee didn’t quite step up enough. Instead of dismissing Dinah’s, understandable, suspicions, she made the other woman even more interested in it. Helena was thrilled that she wasn’t looking at her bright red face, because that would give her away. “With … Ellen.”

“Really?” Dinah asked excitedly. “That’s a big step, Renee, you need any help?”

“Yeah, sure, if you want to. It’s probably gonna piss you off.”

“What are friends for?” Dinah teased. “You alright there, Helena?”

“She’s just embarrassed about it all,” Renee cut in. “Not used to all of the intimate details.”

“Well, I don’t know if I want to know those either.”

<>

“So, what date ideas have you got?” Renee asked instead of saying hello as she walked into Helena’s apartment. She didn’t flinch as much as she used to, and didn’t look up from the papers she had been working on. “That’s a lot of writing there, Crossbow.”

“I wanted to come up with as many options as possible.”

“That’s fair. I’m gonna grab a beer and then we’ll talk ‘em over.”

Helena shuffled the papers into order, her best ideas on top. She’d done hours of research about first dates and asking out someone that they’re friends with. There was a lot of information to learn about first dates and a lot of that information involved already understanding apparently ‘obvious’ interpersonal relationship skills so Helena had to do even more research than the average person. Her main idea was to go somewhere that they would both like but would also give them things to talk about, the most basic and obvious idea she could have come up with, but given the type of people that they were, it would be difficult to find somewhere that didn’t involve beating up bad guys. Her research told her that was probably bad.

“Okay, so, coffee shops, not a bad idea, bars, you’ve circled that but put a question mark next to it, an exclamation mark and two arr- … two crossbow bolts next to museums, I’ll consider that to be a good idea. Restaurant, there are three crossbow bolts next to which I’m assuming means you’re very confident. Hey, I know that place, it’s the Italian one down the street, you can show off that you speak Italian. That can be sexy.”

“A few of the things I read said that speaking a second language is a good thing to show off,” she agreed, nodding. “But I’m worried that I won’t have something to talk about. Because I want it to be a date.”

“When I was a kid, and I mean an actual kid, Cass’ age, my mum told me that a good first date shouldn’t feel like a date. Do you get it?”

“No, it’s very unspecific and vague.”

“It means, if you’re already friends, a good first date should feel very similar to hanging out, but you have your feelings out there.”

“So it should be a friends thing, but with feelings? I can do that.”

“Exactly.”


	2. Chapter 2

Whilst Dinah thinking that Renee was attempting to get back together with Ellen worked in that she didn’t suspect Helena trying to ask her out, it caused some problems in that Dinah was trying to help Renee get back together with Ellen. The two of them had, of course, warned Ellen about what Dinah was trying to do and, whilst she had not been thrilled, had accepted it was something she would need to deal with for a few weeks. Helena was very grateful and made sure to buy the other woman a drink every time they went out together. 

“I have a plan,” Dinah announced, making sure to walk loudly so that her words didn’t surprise Helena whilst she was sat working. “I have a plan for getting Renee and Ellen back together.”

“Are you sure?” she asked hesitantly, subtly shifting her papers to hide the script she was working on for asking Dinah out. It would ruin it all if Dinah saw that. “I think Renee can manage it herself, can’t she?”

“Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with helping her,” Dinah shrugged. “Besides, Renee always gets all tongue-tied when she’s trying to be nice to Ellen so she probably needs our help to get started.”

Helena froze up a little bit as her friend mentioned that. Tongue-tied was a good description of how she got when trying to talk to Dinah about non-vigilante topics. And if Dinah could recognise that in Renee, someone who was much better at hiding her feelings and deflecting questions than Helena was, she could probably figure it out with how Helena was acting. 

“I suppose,” Helena replied. “What’s your plan?”

“Do you remember when Renee got completely hammered a couple months ago? So hammered that she didn’t remember the night before?” Dinah asked. 

“That happened three times in April,” Helena said, shaking her head. 

“The time when she joined me for karaoke,” Dinah clarified. “You had four beers and a vodka shot.”

She nodded, remembering the night. Ellen hadn’t been with them, Renee never got completely wasted when she was there, and so Renee had decided to drink everything she could possibly drink. Since they were at their usual bar, everyone had been surprised when Renee joined Dinah to sing. She hadn’t been good, even sober Renee wasn’t a good singer, but it had been entertaining and Helena had a new fondness for the songs they sung when they were played on the radio.

“Well, when I was walking her home, she told me about their first date together, years ago,” Dinah began, sitting down at the table. “I thought we could maybe try and recreate it. They went out for dinner and then they went to a club, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to manage, it’s just the details we have to get right.”

“Do you think first dates are important?” Helena asked carefully, suddenly second-guessing all of her plans. “Do you think they make or break a relationship?”

“No, but I think that for couples like them, with an on again off again relationship, it’s good to remind them of how they started out,” she shrugged. Helena couldn’t tell if she was suspicious or not and her anxiety was continuing to increase. “Do you want to help?”

“Yes,” Helena said, too quickly. Dinah could ask her to do anything and she would say yes. 

Her grandmother, the days when she was babysitting Helena, had told her that love was about wanting to make the other person as happy as you possibly could. Looking at Dinah, eyes so bright with excitement, Helena would jump out the window without a second thought if the other woman even suggested it. Though, based on their other interactions, she doubted that would make Dinah happy. 

“Okay, so, a big part of this is getting them to end up alone together,” Dinah said. “Because, obviously, Ellen will go out drinking with us, but her and Renee won’t be alone with each other. I think if we stay with them at the restaurant, we can keep them on track, and then get them in the mood for dancing.”

Helena nodded, tapping her side in the usual three beat pattern. With the steady sensation it was a little easier to keep herself calm and follow Dinah’s words. She knew that this was going to cause problems, it was involving too many people, too many things she couldn’t plan for and things would undoubtedly spiral out of control, especially considering it was them. Nothing went to plan with them.

“Are you alright?” Dinah asked. “Your tapping is getting faster, that happens when you’re nervous, right?”

“I’m not so great about relationships and stuff,” she said and was glad that wasn’t a lie. One of the biggest pieces of advice about love she’d come across, from anyone she’d spoken to in her life, from everything she’d read when doing her research, Helena knew you were supposed to be as honest as possible with anyone you cared about, especially significant others. “It makes me confused.”

“Well, you’ve got me,” Dinah promised. “If it gets too confusing, or overwhelming, you can just ask me. No question is stupid.”

She nodded in understanding and consciously slowed down her tapping. She hadn’t realised Dinah had noticed that was her nervous stim, Helena used it because, in the crowded and loud spaces they worked in, nobody paid it much attention. Dinah paced when she was nervous, she trained especially harder, and was moving around as much as possible. Harley called it nervous energy, a common symptom of nerves, apparently. It helped to have a friend, because Harley was their friend no matter what was happening, who had a PhD in psychology. 

  
  


<>

  
  


“Good morning,” Helena said automatically as Renee trudged out of her room and into her kitchen. It was not morning, nowhere near morning, but Renee got grumpy when she was reminded of that just waking up. Helena also didn’t have a key for Renee’s apartment but that had never stopped her before. “I have a problem about our plan.”

“Okay, pass me that coffee cup,” Renee agreed, drinking it as soon as the cup was offered. She sighed in contentment. “What’s the problem?”

“Dinah has a plan for getting you and Ellen back together because of what you told her,” she explained. “Next Friday she wants us to all go out to dinner together and then go to the club round the corner from her apartment. Ellen may feel uncomfortable with that.”

“I’ve told her about the cover we’re using,” Renee said, waving her hand. “I’ll send her a text and explain it. I assume at some point in this plan, you and Dinah leave me and Ellen by ourselves. You can use this, you and Dinah will be alone together and then you can ask her out.”

Helena understood the logic, and the idea of being alone with Dinah made her heart race in a way that was no longer unpleasant, but there was still so much that the plan involved. She found herself tapping the pattern again. Renee was making toast, heaping butter all over two slices whilst spreading the thinnest layer possible over the third, placing it in front of Helena. For a little while it was quiet, save for their eating, as Helena tried to put her concerns into words.

“But that means that her plan will have to work and that there are no outside problems we have to deal with,” she pointed out. “Those are two extra challenges.”

“We don’t always have outside problems.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Alright, alright, Crossbow, but we deal with outside problems and our plans still work. Have you got a plan for how you’re going to word it?”

She slid the script she had been agonising over for two weeks across the table and focused back on her toast. Ever since Helena had been old enough to choose what she wanted to eat, she’d always had one slice of toast with a very small amount of butter. With her parents, anything she wanted she would get and even being trained as an assassin, plain, buttered toast wasn’t too much of an ask. At least she kept it all consistent. Renee had a pen out and was writing notes on the script, handwriting rushed and a little sloppy, but still legible. 

Helena was wondering what to get Ellen as an apology present for making her deal with all of this. Renee had complained about how much she liked a certain type of gin, but she had complained about it the same way she complained that Cass preferred sci-fi over cop shows so Helena figured that meant it was probably a good thing. And it was the only thing she knew for a fact that Ellen liked, something she should definitely remedy, so it was the best option to go with. 

“This is looking good, Crossbow,” Renee said appreciatively. “It’s not too long, not too mushy, and there’s no way she’ll confuse it for a friend thing.”

It was very basic praise but Helena lit up. She hadn’t realised when she was being trained how much she had craved the affection her parents and brother had given her until she became friends with the others and their kindness, even without realising it, floored her. Though her compliments always came out a little blunt and not quite as affectionate as she meant them, the others received her praise with equal enthusiasm.

“I’ll call Ellen and tell her about it. We can play nice for one night.”

  
  


<>

  
  


Helena wasn’t thrilled about busy restaurants.

She wasn’t sure if it was because of the constant background noise that made it difficult to concentrate on the conversation, the fact that she wasn’t the one making her food and therefore couldn’t ensure there would be no problems with the texture, or that she’d killed a lot of people in restaurants and those memories weren’t the most pleasant, but something always set her off. The conversation, at least, was simple enough to follow, and Renee had stuck to her word about playing nice. Helena had made sure to pick a restaurant that was relatively quiet for if she managed to work up the courage that night to ask the question. 

“Ready to get to the club?” Dinah asked, mischief in her eyes, sparkling in slightly painful fluorescent lights. They’d all had at least one beer, Renee had had two but they were the weaker ones that she preferred for the taste, and the food had given them a happy buzz. The plan at that point was simple; one they were at the club for a little while, Ellen and Renee would disappear on the dancefloor and Helena would invite Dinah for fresh air outside. Then she would ask. Easy. 

The plan started to go wrong as soon as they stepped out of the restaurant. 

After a lot of childhood trauma, years of intense training and a decent amount of time spent as a vigilante, Helena had developed a pretty good radar for when trouble was about to start, and it was going off on red alert immediately. The others also picked up on the energy, Renee touching her pocket where her brass knuckles were kept and Dinah suddenly very alert. Ellen even had a little can of pepper spray in her pocket that Helena knew could pack a punch. 

Thankfully, the problem didn’t directly involve them.

A speeding truck turned a corner just a little too fast and crashed into the building near them, sending bricks and other debris flying. The driver, somehow miraculously okay, got out of the totaled vehicle to yell at whoever was in the car behind them, ignoring all of the people who had been sprayed with the rubble when he crashed. Helena had only been caught by a couple of small bits of stone, not even hard enough to bruise, and Dinah, the furthest from the crash, hadn’t been hit at all. 

Ellen had twisted her ankle when she’d stepped back and Renee had a slightly bleeding and rapidly bruising mark on her temple. Other members of the public were picking up their friends who had been knocked down and otherwise continuing on with what they were doing. Gotham was a strange place to live and one truck crashing because it was going too fast was going to phase anyone who lived in the city.

“How’s your head?” Dinah was asking, sitting Renee down against the wall whilst Helena helped Ellen hobble over to them. “Feeling sick at all?”

“My head hurts, you’re blurry and I feel like I might puke,” Renee replied, words a little slurred. She hadn’t had enough beers to be that level of drunk. “So that probably means it’s a concussion. Not too bad, though.”

“Hospital’s only a block away,” Dinah said. “I’ll walk you there, c’mon. Ellen, do you need to go?”

“Tiny sprain, at most,” the other woman replied, eyes not leaving Renee. “Just can’t put much weight on it at the moment. It’s fine.”

“I can walk you home, if you like,” Helena volunteered immediately.

It wasn’t that Ellen couldn’t normally handle herself, pepper spray and the fact that most people knew her as a DA gave her a lot of protection, but she was injured and worried about Renee and that made her vulnerable. Helena wasn’t entirely sure when Ellen had become one of the people she cared about, that group was very small and only included two other people outside of those standing with her, but it had happened and that meant no one was allowed to hurt her. 

“Thanks,” Ellen said, gratefully. 

After a few goodbyes and promises to text as soon as they were home or had results, Helena began helping Ellen walk home. It was mostly quiet, crime in Gotham usually happening much later in the night, and neither of the two women felt like they needed to say anything. The walk to Ellen’s place was further than the walk to the hospital but not terribly long, not long enough for Ellen to suffer very much though if it got bad Helena was more than prepared to carry her. 

“Thanks for the gin, by the way,” Ellen said. “It was really sweet of you to drop it off.”

“No problem,” Helena replied. Her parents had taught her to say ‘you’re welcome’ when she was thanked but from what she had seen of how other people acted, that felt like a thing only people their age did, that most young people said ‘no problem’. Besides, it hadn’t been a problem. 

“And I’m sorry the night didn’t end how you hoped.”

“It’s okay. I was so nervous I think I would have forgotten everything I had planned on saying.”

“Just means you care,” Ellen reassured her. “What did you decide on saying?”

“I was going to say that I liked her as more than a friend and, if she wanted to, we could go to dinner at a nearby restaurant,” Helena explained, giving her the shorter version she had told Cass after the girl had pestered her into giving up some of the information. “And it seems simple and so easy to say, but every time I look at Dinah my heart just gets too fast and I forgot how to talk.”


	3. Chapter 3

Renee returned from the hospital the next morning, no longer concussed but miserable. According to the older woman, it was worse than her worst hangover. Helena had seen some of Renee’s bad hangovers and definitely didn’t envy her condition. One benefit of that night, the only benefit, was that Ellen and Renee had managed to bond, willingly spending quality time together again. Helena wasn’t sure how that had happened but it was nice to see them happy and it meant she wasn’t lying to Dinah anymore. That was always good.

“I don’t understand how Harley has Bruce trained so well, but I have to admit it’s very impressive,” Dinah said, walking over to the sofa with two beers, handing the full one to Helena.

“Apparently she won his trust by feeding him the previous owner,” Helena replied, remembering the story fondly. Dinah choked on her beer before recovering and sighing to herself.

“Yeah, that sounds like Harley.”

Helena was hyper aware of how close Dinah was sitting. It wasn’t a sensory thing; that had stopped being a problem months ago. But they were almost touching shoulders and Helena could feel the heat of the other woman, felt strands of hair brushing against her skin and it was hard to focus on anything other than her mind demanding more more more on repeat.

“You alright? You’re all tense.”

“I’m okay,” Helena replied, trying to force herself to relax. She began tapping her thigh, the sensation comforting but not enough. 

“Are you sure? I know Harley and Cass being here can be a bit overwhelming for you,” Dinah continued and Helena thought she could hear genuine concern in the other woman’s voice. They were friends, it was more than reasonable for Dinah to be concerned about Helena being overwhelmed and tense. It wasn’t reasonable for Helena to be feeling so much warmth at the idea of Dinah caring for her, cheeks blushing slightly.

“I’m sure.”

“Good. Hey, can I ask something?” Dinah began, turning to face her, awkwardly cross-legged on the sofa. Helena mimicked the pose and took another sip of her beer. She prayed to a god she hadn’t believed in since her parents died that Dinah wasn’t going to ask about her feelings, or why she was acting so much stranger recently. “What were you teaching Cass earlier?”

“She wanted to learn Italian,” Helena replied, grateful for the direction of the conversation. “I’ve been teaching her some of the more useful words and phrases, things that are said most often or the easiest to understand.”

“That’s cool. Can you teach me some?”

“Um, yeah. What do you want to learn?”

“Just the basics. I was never good at languages in school.”

“Well, uh, sure, um, yes is sì and no is, well, no.”

Dinah repeated the words, grinning at the second one. Her smile made something in Helena chest flutter. Her dark eyes sparkled at the prospect of a challenge and Helena would do anything to keep her doing that.

“Thank you is grazie. Please is per favore.”

Again she repeated the words. Her ‘favore’ was said with more of a French accent than an Italian one. Normally when she heard people mispronouncing Italian it grated on her it was the language she thought in, the language she remembered her family in, and American accents usually butchered it. When Dinah mispronounced it, however, she thought it was cute.

“Mum is mamma. Dad is babo.”

“Mamma and babo.”

“Grandmother and grandfather are nonna and nonno.”

“Nonna and nonno.”

“But the more affectionate name is nonnita and nonnito.”

“Nonnita and nonnito. That’s really cute. Did your grandparents have any nicknames for you? Italian ones?”

“Bambina,” Helena replied. “And my brother was bambino. It means baby. Um, if something ends in -ina or -ino it normally means little. So, gatto is cat and then gattina is a kitten.”

“Cool,” Dinah said. “Wait, did you call your grandparents ‘little grandma’ and ‘little grandfather’?”

“It doesn’t always translate perfectly.”

<>

“Have you asked Dinah out yet?” Cass asked, clicking quickly on the controller as some game played on the tv screen in front of them. Helena choked on her juice, she refused to drink alcohol in front of the girl, as did the others, and struggled to catch her breath. “Is that a surprised yes or a surprised no?”

“It’s a surprised no.”

“Why? You both like each other. Doesn’t it make sense that you should date each other?” she continued, still playing her game.

It had been two weeks since Helena had given Dinah the first Italian lesson and they continued them in a much less structured way than how she was teaching Cass. She was actually supposed to be teaching the girl at the moment but the last lesson had gone well and so Helena thought she should just let the girl relax a bit. But ignoring the twenty or so minutes every few days where they talked about Italian words, occasionally delicately touching on Helena’s family, nothing else had changed. 

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Well, I think that’s fucking dumb.”

Helena covered Cass’ eyes, making her character take a hit, and laughed at her irritated groan. Admittedly, they tended to swear quite a bit in front of Cass but he was pretty much the only one who tried to stop the girl from swearing too much. And letting her character take one hit wasn’t a particularly bad punishment. Cass was laughing as well, resting against her side.

“It’s still more complicated than that.”

“I still think that’s f- dumb.”

“That’s because you’re young. It’s less complicated for you.”

Renee had explained it to her, a while ago, that the older you got, the more complicated relationships were. Helena could understand the logic, the older you got the more likely you were to have some kind of baggage, but she didn’t think that was always bad. Renee and Ellen were on their way to being back in a happy relationship again, and they both had quite a bit of baggage. The real reason that Helena hadn’t asked out Dinah yet was because she was too scared.

Being rejected was one fear that she had, a reasonable fear that she had but she didn’t want things between the two of them to be uncomfortable, or to break their friendship entirely. Her friends were the most important people to her and the only thing more terrifying than them dying was the idea of them choosing to leave her, voluntarily. Helena was fairly certain she would be okay with never confessing if it meant she didn’t have to deal with those fears.

There was a crashing sound by the door and Bruce got up, yapping excitedly, as Harley burst in through the door. She thankfully didn’t have any weapons in her arms, or being fired at her, so Helena assumed it was a quiet day for the other woman. Harley spent a few minutes cooing over Bruce and greeting her other animals, stuffed or otherwise, before joining the two of them on the sofa. 

“I see Italian lessons are going splendidly.”

“Last lesson went well so I thought Cass deserved a break,” Helena shrugged, trying to seem casual. As insane and batty as Harley acted and, admittedly, was, there was a terrifying intellect there as well that meant she knew it would only be a few minutes at most for the other woman to realise that she was anxious and why.

“Oh,” Harley said sympathetically. “Have you not asked out Dinah yet?”

Or, she would get it immediately.

“She says it’s complicated,” Cass said helpfully. “Which I think is bull because they both like each other and that makes it not complicated, right?”

“Interpersonal relationships can be complicated even with mutual feelings,” Harley replied. Her analytical gaze turned on Helena and she felt like the woman could see into her soul. She had spent most of her life being told that she had a hard-to-read face, mostly because she didn’t show her emotions in the ways that most people did, and even once people got to know her and deciphered her body language, it was nothing compared to how Harley could examine her. “Fear of confessing feelings, even though you know they are mutual, is very normal, you know.”

“I don’t know if they're mutual. Dinah could just see me as a friend,” Helena countered. Cass snorted with laughter. “What?”

“Of course Dinah likes you back. She goes all goo-goo eyes when you’re together and she gets all smiley about it,” she explained as though it was obvious. “You’re just as bad as each other.”

Helena felt like she’d been hit by a truck.

She had hoped, ever since she’d realised her feelings, that Dinah felt the same way but it had always been more of an abstract hope than anything real. The idea that Dinah might actually feel the same way, that it was obvious to other people she did, had never seriously occurred to her. Helena wondered if Renee thought it was obvious as well and, if she had why the other woman hadn’t mentioned it to her before. Then logic kicked in, much slower because of everything else that was going on, and she realised that if Renee thought it was obvious, she probably thought it was obvious to her as well. 

Her thoughts were a jumbled mess of looking for signs she had missed, going through her symptoms list for anything applicable, and a constant repeating loop of ‘Dinah likes me Dinah likes me Dinah likes me’. She almost missed Cass’ question and it took longer than normal to process it, leaving the three of them waiting in silence for a few moments. 

“Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

“Alright,” Cass shrugged, going back to her game.

Harley began regaling them with her day in which only one of the things she did was legal, buying a sandwich from Sal’s, and Helena could tune some of it out to think over everything she had learned. She went over her script for asking out Dinah, wondering if she needed to change anything. Cass added in a few comments here and there, asking about people she knew, but continued focusing on her video game. Helena wasn’t sure how the girl could concentrate on both of the tasks but she was glad there was someone responding to Harley’s story. 

“When can I get a tattoo?” Cass asked, startling Helena out of her thoughts.

“If Dinah and Renee agree; sixteen,” she replied sternly. The girl’s eyes grew wide and Helena wondered if she’d misspoken. 

“Seriously? Sixteen? That’s awesome!”

“Only if Dinah and Renee agree,” she reminded the girl. She didn’t doubt that Harley would be all for any tattoo ideas Cass had, they’d played around with hundreds of semi-permanent tattoos together so it was probably better to get two responsible adults’ opinions. They should probably ask Ellen as well, since she was a lawyer, if she had an opinion on it. “If they say no you can’t get it.”

“Awesome!”

Cass ran off to her room excitedly, Bruce following on her heels.

“You know that you can’t legally get tattooed until you’re eighteen in America, right?”

<>

“Hey, how was Cass today?” Dinah asked, walking into the kitchen with two cups of coffee. She offered one of the cups to Helena and she took it gratefully. “I heard Harley got back early.”

“Yes, she did. I also might have promised that Cass could get a tattoo when she’s sixteen,” Helena said. Dinah choked on her drink, laughing.

“Oh, god, why?” she asked. “I bet she was thrilled when she heard that.”

“In Italy, you can get a tattoo at sixteen, if your parents give written consent,” she explained. “I didn’t realise it was different over here. But don’t worry, I told her that you and Renee have to agree first. Harley seemed okay with that so I think it’s okay.”

Dinah chuckled, settling into the chair next to her. She was trying not to stare at Dinah but she also didn’t know how to stop. The news that Dinah liked her was still rattling around her head. Helena had found herself looking for her symptoms in the other woman. Cass had said that Dinah had made ‘goo-goo eyes’ at her but Helena didn’t really know what those looked like. And staring at Dinah’s eyes, whilst not unpleasant, would probably give away her emotions, or at least come off as strange.

“Are you doing, alright?”

“Um, yeah, I was just thinking.”

“Anything in particular? Do you want to talk about it?”

Helena looked at her, a small smile on her lips, hair over one shoulder, in her normal tight pants and crop tops. Her mouth went dry. Dinah continued to look at her, eyes soft and wide, and Helena figured that maybe that was what ‘goo-goo eyes’ were. She hoped that’s what they were. 

“I-um-I … You’re pretty.”

She felt herself blush bright red. Dinah looked shocked for a moment before grinning. Helena felt like she might not have completely screwed up but they needed more of a conversation than her saying she was pretty. 

“You’re very pretty. And you’re smart and you’re so nice and happy and you sing amazingly and when you smile my heart gets all fast and I get so happy when I see you and um - I like you. I really like you and in more than a friend way. Sorry.”

“No need to apologise,” Dinah told her quickly, grabbing her hand before she could stand up and run away. “I happen to really like you too. In more than a friend way.”

“Oh,” she said dumbly. Helena lit up. “Oh!”

“Would you like to be together in more than a friends way?” she asked almost hesitantly. 

“Yes!”

Her answer was a little too loud, Helena realised after she spoke, but she was excited and elated and slightly in shock at everything she’d learned in just one day. Dinah was still holding her hand; her touch was warm and soft and Helena finally understood the phrase ‘stomach full of butterflies’. Her stomach felt exactly like that in response to Dinah’s touch.

“Is this alright?” she asked quietly, rubbing a thumb over the back of her hand. Helena nodded. “Do you think - do you think I could kiss you?”

Helena nodded again.

It wasn’t her first kiss, when Dinah leaned in and their eyes fluttered shut. Helena had kissed other people before, but not many people, and she knew what to do and what she liked and what other people liked. Kissing Dinah, however brief the kiss was, made her mind go blank, working purely on instinct, kissing the other woman back. If it wasn’t for the fact that she knew it was impossible, Helena would have been scared that her heart would burst. As it was, adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, but in the good way, the best way.

“Okay?” Dinah asked when they broke apart, foreheads resting together, her hand cupping Helena’s cheek. 

“Very okay,” she replied, voice breathy. “What about you?”

“Very okay.”

They giggled at each other, still holding hands, and Helena couldn’t think of a time when she’d felt happier. She was looking at Dinah, eyes tracing over her features again and again and again, and it felt so good to not have to worry about hiding what she was feeling.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for so long,” Dinah mumbled. “Since we were sitting in that diner.”

“I’ve liked you longer than I know,” she replied honestly. “I spent weeks trying to figure out what I was feeling, I wrote it all down, every time you smiled at me, what I felt when you were singing. Renee had to tell me what it meant.”

“That’s amazing.”

“She’ll be thrilled to hear that I managed to tell you. I’d been planning on doing it the night the truck crashed but then the truck crashed and I couldn’t. Obviously.”

“Well, my mum always said ‘better late than never’.”

“Doing this now definitely feels better than doing it never.”


End file.
